Read CIWM’s review of the Resources and Waste Strategy now or check out the bitesize summary video featuring CIWM’s Director of Innovation and Technical Services Lee Marshall.
At the start of 2024, the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) set up a Task and Finish Group to review the Resources and Waste Strategy (R&WS), following discussions at its Policy and Innovation Forum.
This was in anticipation of a general election that would happen in 2024 and a possible change in government.
The P&I Forum saw an opportunity within this possible political change to review where the R&WS was and what really needed to change to bring about the ambitions of net zero.
CIWM believes this review can support the new government in their first 100 days that are seen as crucial for them to grasp what is needed for a more economic and resource-resilient UK.
It also provides the thoughts and foundations for the longer-term policy thinking and changes that are needed to create a resource-resilient UK, move towards a circular economy and achieve net zero.
As a sector, there is a real need to move the UK to become a resource-resilient country. The current Resources and Waste Strategy does not go far enough and does not contain the policy levers to achieve this.
That means developing a new strategy for the sector, a Resource Resilience Strategy that is aimed at facilitating a move to a circular economy, that keeps resources in economic use and brings about a change in the way products are designed and used.
This change in perspective for the policy drivers impacting our sector will ultimately help to mitigate climate change.
The review was undertaken in two parts.
Part one
The first task of the working group was to undertake a fundamental review of the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy (R&WS).
They analysed the policies that had been proposed in it and how far the government had got in implementing them.
There was also a recognition of the external context policymakers were operating in during this period that could influence their ability to get things done.
Part two
The second part then built on this and looked at where we are today and how conversations and thoughts have advanced since 2018.
What would a strategy need to include today if you produced a successor to the R&WS? And more importantly, what should such a strategy be focused on and, at a high level, be looking to achieve and facilitate?
Bitesize headlines
The findings
Progress on implementing the policies proposed in the 2018 R&WS has been slow and in those five-plus years, the context our sector operates in has changed.
It is no longer about maximising recycling, it is about the move towards a circular economy, the progress towards net zero and then through both of these helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Even if we saw all the policies in the R&WS implemented, they are not designed to do this to the scale or at the pace that is needed.
A new Resource Resilience Strategy is needed with policies that are focused on the circular economy and net zero.
This does not mean abandoning all the policies in the R&WS, CIWM members and the sector expect to see consistent collections/simpler recycling, extended producer responsibility for packaging (pEPR), reform to Carrier Brokers Dealers, and digital waste tracking fully in place.
CIWM has produced nine policy asks the Resource Resilience Strategy should have that the Institution believes will see the UK take great strides in the right direction. They are not yet fully formed and do not provide all the answers.
But they do provide part of the answer and show where we need to ask further questions along with where the sector can support the new UK Government and other policymakers across the UK and Ireland.
Throughout the 125 years that CIWM has existed, our members have been providers of solutions to others’ problems, the problems society was content to throw away.
Now we are in a place where we can provide solutions to keeping resources in economic use, reducing the take on the planet and moving to a resource-resilient UK.
Read CIWM’s review of the Resources and Waste Strategy now.
